Stroopy121

Man who punches men in the face for a living turns out to be a piece of shit. In other news, water continues to be wet. xx

..or maybe he has really savvy roadies who tell him it's SUPER RARE, so they procure the gear and sell it to him at a massive markup? Either way, fuckhead. xx

How can someone who enjoys recreational drugs want to vote for Trump?? Trump will ban the Mexicans then all the drugs will vanish?! xx

I put his staggering level of wrongness on this down to PTSD. Though, if he was an NRA member and Trump supported before the incident, then he's just another fucking idiot. xx

We used it for a lot of big Burlesque and Cabaret shows. The total venue hire came in between £500 and £800 (including door staff) depending on whether you wanted a Friday or a Saturday. Obscene. The price actually went up the more punters you expected, as they charge you for the cost of door staff with a mark-up. Our shows would usually sell 200-300 tickets, so we had to hedge our bets and get 3 door staff (one per 100 people) at about £100-£150 per head. Our shows usually ended about midnight but the venue always encouraged us to keep the place running as a clubnight until 3am, but if we did that they'd charge us the extra 3 person x 3 hours of door staff bill, and then merrily take in all that extra drink money from the punters! The folks at the venue were generally all really decent but I always got the impression that as soon as you move up the chain you very quickly reach a shower of leeching, profiteering shitebags. And every single show had a couple of punters complain about drinks prices, which were also fucking mental. It's a massive place and must cost a fortune to run. The sound and lighting equipment were straight out of the 70's Disco era of hardware and in dire need of an upgrade, too. Running a show there with a full lineup of performers we needed about 150 people through the door at £10 a ticket to break even. Shame though, beautiful venue. Hope someone with deep pockets buys it and tries to make it more usable. xx

Yeah, you do kinda need to watch it as it's mostly a character/dialogue driven story. The superpowers only really get busted out in some fight scenes towards the end of the season. Arrow and Flash are much better background-viewing. xx

I can't stop watching The League. It's mostly pish but I just can't switch it off! xx

Never read the comments. xx

Interesting video about Hitler imagery being used in Thailand, to continue the point that "Hitler is the ultimate example of the worst human in history" isn't a global opinion. xx

Maybe the problem is you're a dreadful reader? xx

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here? I would have thought that the race discussion being more generalist would be in line with what you're saying the future needs? A push for "human power" rather than seperate discussions about Black Power, Girl Power, etc? And yeah, that second post is a good 'un, the simple message to take away from it being that Black Power is, as ca_gere said, a much more nuanced term than White Power, which fairly universally is a term of hate and oppression, whereas Black Power is a term for ANTI oppression, be it based on race or class. However, I don't believe that Black Autonomy or Separatism are the same thing as Black Supremacy at all, so I still think likening Black Power to White Power is fundamentally inaccurate. xx

I'm not trying to pin anything on you. I asked you two questions, because "face value" impressions of a hugely complicated and emotionally charged topic like race relations is completely useless, so I thought I'd try to open a dialogue. You said we need to " get over the barriers we erected" and I'm asking what you propose as a first step on that road? The reason I ask is because the only real way to address the issue is to let the groups of people that straight white men have historically silenced have their say. Even if we don't like what they say. ESPECIALLY if we don't like what they say. That's why we teach history and historical context for these issues. Young people tend to be much better educated than their elders on these subjects. As I said, face value examination of this subject is meaningless. And also... is this you saying that if we stop talking about racism, that racism goes away...? I understand the sentiment behind that statement is well-intentioned but as soon as you scratch the surface of it, you see that it's reductive and problematic. Honestly, I totally understand the desire to remove race, gender, etc from these equations, but it just doesn't work that way. By trying to do so, you're actually dismissing the experiences of the people who live with this kind of discrimination every day. I'd love to see the colour of someone's skin stop being an issue, but it IS an issue and the only way to start healing these wounds is for white people to listen when people are saying that race/gender/sexual orientation is an issue. There are many lunatic, nazi, hardcore racists out there but "passive racism" is also a huge, huge problem where people are being racist, or contributing to a white supremacist society without knowing it. The problem isn't that people are talking about race, the problem is that until now, the discussions have all been shut down and anyone who isn't a white/male/cis/straight is silenced. Yeah, there will always be holes poked in posts about these topics. That's important. It's how we learn and progress the dialogue. Even if our delicate white feelings get hurt. Hear what you've done/said wrong and learn. xx

is this the one where "The Gang Beats Boggs" is the first ep, or is there a new season? Is it on Netflix?? xx

I tried it and bailed after like 2 episodes on the first whack, but I gave it a second spin and absolutely fell in love. the pace slowly picks up through the season which I really liked, rather than having episode one be riddled with ultraviolence then the rest of the season trying to keep up. How far in are you? xx

The reason the Black Panther tribute is such a poignant one is that they were founded in the '60s as a form of self defense from police brutality and general racial violence. Given the deaths of so many black people at the hands of cops, including children, and the officers all totally escaping justice, the Black Panther tribute highlighted that even though we SEEM to have moved on from old-time racism, it's still there. It's still killing people every day. You say racism is "SUPPOSEDLY rife"?! Look at Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Mike Brown.. the list goes on and on and on. You say humanity has to get over the barriers we erected... but how do you propose that happens? That if black people stop talking about racism, that white people will stop being racist?! That if women stop calling out misogyny that men will stop being misogynists? And are you trying to imply that there's no racism in the UK..? That it's only a problem overseas...? xx

GROAN xx

REM - Orange Crush xx

So then what's an abaya?! xx

That's a can of worms, especially for fans of American sports. In the NFL and NBA it's pretty difficult to find a single team that doesn't have any player who has been involved in a scandal like this. It's less prolific over here in sports, which I think is partly due to the fact that soccerball has less of a hardcore machismo atmostphere, which typically means less toxic masculinity and associated horrendousness. It's a really difficult subject, especially when it comes to domestic violence or rape accusations, as these crimes are notoriously incredibly difficult to prove and get convictions for, so even if a player is a "known" offender, there may be no legal precedent to sack them. And there's also the "innocent until PROVEN guilty" side of it. Cosby, for example, has never been PROVEN guilty... so should we cut him some slack? But by cutting him slack since he's not been legally proven guilty, we're spitting in the faces of the 50+ women who say they were violated by him and, by proxy, every victim of these kinds of assaults who stayed quiet because they knew they couldn't PROVE anything, or because they were scared of their attacker. When did Johnson plead guilty? Like, is it a recent development or did he admit to his crimes months ago and is he still on the team? xx

I suppose you don't like Mumford and Sons either, you heathen! xx

I've used Kinellar Guitars in the past and can't recommend him enough - great guy, fast, clean work. http://kinellarguitars.co.uk/ xx

My desire to overlook a band's personal politics is pretty slim, but I find it nigh impossible to do so when it's a "feature" member of a band. I quite liked LostProphets and used to listen to them a lot in my school days, but now I feel sick to the stomach knowing that a man I used to identify with wrote all that material while he was fucking kids.. It's not even a bittersweet thing, it flat out turns my stomach. If it was the rhythm guitarist I might have felt differently, I might have been able to ignore it if I really tried. I went off Frank Turner when I found out he was a bit of a Tory.. not in a conscious way, I just started hearing the voice of an arsehole and I didn't like it any more. Even though he now says that he's not. I get what he was saying in 2009, I think, that a lot of people think (especially after Thatcher Fucked the Kids) that he's a screaming hard left socialist when he's more moderate than that, so being more right-wing than Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn meant he felt misrepresented by the reputation that had almost been foisted on him. http://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/sep/05/frank-turner-im-not-a-tory If an artist makes transphobic or homophobic remarks, or says shit I fundamentally disagree with, it often colours my perception of them whether I want it to or not, but I think I'm in a minority of people who takes this kinda stuff more seriously than others do. Henry Rollins' piece on suicide after the death of Robin Williams made me lose SO much respect for him - he just comes across as the worst kind of arrogant, macho fucking arsehole (http://www.laweekly.com/music/henry-rollins-fuck-suicide-5016770) which I know he kinda is, but at least he never seemed to kick down before. He seemed to target the big and powerful and stand up for the little guy and this felt like a real reality check. He wrote a "retraction" of sorts a few days later where he seemed genuinely sad to have hurt so many people. Folks who wrote to him explained why what he was saying was dogshit and he seemed in his followup to really take it on board. It's easy to say something shitty, we all do it, but a genuine "I fucked up, thanks for calling me on it, I'll try to be better" goes a long way (http://www.laweekly.com/music/henry-rollins-more-thoughts-on-suicide-5027287). In my eyes, if you support a band with openly racist members, if you wear the tshirts and buy the records, then in my mind it's saying you care more about the songs than you do about the politics... and I don't think any band are more important than these kinds of issues, whether it's contributing to the continuing stigmatisation of mental health issues, homophobia, racism, or domestic violence, rape, murder, paedophilia, whatever. You're giving people a pass on their crimes and it's not something I'm OK with. As for Lemmy, I think his collection and use of Nazi symbolism is fuckwitted and ill-informed, and stinks of privilege, but I don't think it makes him a bad person and I don't think it reflects his personal politics (as the video above demonstrates). The reason it's such a dick move, and what sets it apart from, say, Genghis Khan memorabilia is that not only are there still-living victims, there are still fairly major pro-Nazi denominations, gangs and (though they try to deny it) political parties, which brings us back around to Phil Anselmo. When the Nazis are all gone, when there are no pro-nazi groups, when nobody living has seen friends and loved ones killed in the name of Nazis, then (in my eyes) it starts to become more of a gray area and you start being able to look at the fashion of it separately from the politics. But that's just me. xx

I really like it. I agree that the recordings aren't as beefy as they could be but I certainly don't think it's enough to put me off. The bass and the keys are really enjoyable, the horns feel a little messy in a good way, like they're jamming their parts rather than playing to sheet music. The drums, I really have no strong opinion on. I can't see them as a source of criticism, other than that the bass and drums aren't necessarily locked together as tightly as they could be. And I like the chap's voice. The only real criticism I have is that the songs don't have any real defining feature. Like, when you think of Smoke on the Water, you immediately think of THAT riff.. or with most songs there's a hook or a chorus or a riff or a something that makes the song stick with you, whereas these tracks seem to lack that. The verse seems to bleed into the chorus so gradually that you don't realise that the chorus is over until you hit the refrain/solo/bridge/other part. Will definitely be keeping an eye out for future stuff and am keenly looking to see it live to see if there are more pronounced dynamics live. xx

BUYYY IT BUYYYY IT BUYYY IT! xx

I picked up a fuckload of Star Wars games in a Steam sale, so it's been The Force Unleashed and KOTOR for me. Really digging TFU, it's aged really well but the combat mechanics seem a little pish compared to the likes of the Arkham games which have came out since and really nailed it. xx